June 20, 2011

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHTS McIlroy captures history at CongressionalRory McIlroy posts the lowest mark in tournament history, shooting a final-round 69 for a total of 16-under 268, as he runs away with the 111th U.S. Open. (By Barry Svrluga)

CEO Pay: What the area’s executives makeHefty stock awards and bonuses drove total compensation up over 20 percent for Washington’s highest-paid chief executives last year, reflecting a nationwide trend among the largest public companies. (By Danielle Douglas)

STYLEAsk Amy: Words of love, uttered and ... forgotten? During a weekend outing, her boyfriend told her he loved her, would marry her “in a week” and wanted her to have his baby. The next day, he couldn’t remember what he said. Yes, there was drinking involved. (, Tribune Media Service)

Hints From Heloise: Special guest request Heloise asks: Is it fair to ask for unusual, specialty or hard-to-find food items when you are a guest in someone’s home? Readers, what do you have to say? (, King)

Calm by the green, crazed by the pitch At the U.S. Open and the Gold Cup, vastly dissimilar cultures were on display — entirely different, yet very much the same. ( by Rick Maese , The Washington Post)

FTC vs. National Gallery Republican lawmaker’s push to have the National Gallery take over the historic FTC building has sparked a turf battle in Washington. ( by Ned Martel , The Washington Post)

Sunday's Sports In Brief BETHESDA, Md. — On another brilliant day of golf, Rory McIlroy ran away with the U.S. Open title, winning by eight shots and breaking the tournament scoring record by a whopping four strokes. ( Associated Press Associated Press , AP)

WORLDReports: Japan's prime minister under pressure to resign next month TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, criticized for his handling of the tsunami disaster and the country’s sluggish economy, is under pressure to resign next month if budget bills are passed by parliament, reports said Monday. ( Associated Press Associated Press , AP)

May 24, 2010

Summer is quickly approaching, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not
the type of person that likes to look sloppy – especially
when it comes to what I’m walking around in. So I’m planning on
doing a little shopping, and just in case you’re planning to do the
same, here are a few Nike Dunks that are worth dropping
some cash on. Read More »

January 05, 2010

Eunice Walker Johnson
(April 4, 1916 - January 3, 2010)

By Margena A. Christian Mrs. Eunice Johnson, producer and director of the Ebony Fashion Fair
and secretary-treasurer of Johnson Publishing Company, died of renal
failure at her home in Chicago. She was 93. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art will honor her work on January 11
as a philanthropist and fashion icon. The tribute, planned some time
ago, was several months in the making.“Mrs. Johnson elevated the image of Black women being fashion
conscious, fashion forward and affluent,” said Kenneth Owen, assistant
producer of Ebony Fashion Fair, who was handpicked by the fashion
pioneer 26 years ago to work alongside her. Born on April 4, 1916 in Selma, Ala., Mrs. Johnson came from a
prestigious family. Her sophistication and fashion sense wasn’t bought.
She was born with it. Mrs. Johnson’s father, Dr. Nathaniel D. Walker,
was a doctor who practiced medicine for five decades, while her mother,
Ethel McAlpine Walker, taught education and art at Selma University.
The institution was founded by Dr. William H. McAlpine, her maternal
grandfather, who also founded the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A.,
Inc. and was close friends with Booker T. Washington.Education was important in the Johnson household. She graduated from
Talladega College with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and a minor in
art. A master’s degree was later earned in social work from Loyola
University in Chicago. Mrs. Johnson was working as a social worker when she quit her job to
support her husband John’s vision of starting a magazine that focused
on Black life. When he was having trouble trying to find a name for a
new magazine in 1945, he asked her for guidance since she had a degree
in art. She chose Ebony because it means “fine black African wood.” The
magazine would go on to define generations. To those on the outside looking in, Mrs. Johnson appeared to be
living in the shadow of her late husband John H. Johnson, founder of
the Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines.
Those who really knew Eunice Walker Johnson understood that she was the
wind beneath his wings. She stood by her husband in sickness and in
health, for better or for worse, in good times and in bad until his
death in 2005.

Mrs. Johnson dined with kings and queens, presidents and musical
royalty, yet she remained down to earth. To hear her speak revealed a
story. When she opened her mouth, her heavy, southern drawl would make
people look twice. “She was a shy woman. She wasn’t somebody you could approach and talk
to right away,” said Audrey Smaltz, the Ebony Fashion Fair commentator
from 1970 to 1977. “She was an astute fashion person who had more than
just fashion in her background. She was an interior designer. She was a
lover of art. She had the greatest art collection you could imagine.
Because of Eunice Johnson, I met Pablo Picasso and Giorgio de Curico.
She introduced me to luxury, art and culture way beyond what I went to
school for. I graduated with an art degree. She took me to a Ph.D.” Always impeccably dressed and wearing designer fashions herself, everything came back to fashion and education.

What started out as a charity benefit in 1958, turned into the birth of
the Ebony Fashion Fair. As the show got underway, the models ran into
problems with make-up, unable to find shades to match their skin. The
solution? Fashion Fair Cosmetics. At the inception of the Ebony Fashion Fair, Mrs. Johnson would travel
to Europe with her husband to buy clothes. They would “beg, persuade,
and threaten to get the right to buy clothes,” Mr. Johnson once said.
The resistance came, he recalled, because certain designers thought
that White women wouldn’t value their designs if they were worn by
Black women.

A few of the leading designers finally agreed to sell fashions to the
Johnsons for the show. Among the first Blacks to buy from French haute
couture fashion houses, they started out spending half a million
dollars annually. “She was eventually known in fashion circles as the largest buyer of
European haute couture,” said Owen. “As time progressed she would spend
a million dollars each year on 200 complete ensembles featured in the
hour and a half presentation.”

Mrs. Johnson bought creations from designers that others were afraid to
take a chance on because they were unknown and just starting out.
Valentino, Roberto Cavalli, Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent were
among the names.

“They were young and in their 20s, just starting out,” said Owen. “They
were looking for people to buy their high-end couture. That started her
personal relationship with them because she was there before they made
a name for themselves.”

Often criticized for not having more Black fashion designers, the Ebony
Fashion Fair did showcase throughout the years the creations of Stephen
Burrows, Patrick Kelly, Willi Smith and B. Michael. In later years it
featured L’Amour, Quinton de Alexander, Kevan Hall, Fusha, Anthony
Hankins, and even the Steve Harvey Collection.

Hands on until the end when her eyesight began to fail her, Mrs.
Johnson made certain to see a complete run-through of each fashion show
with the models before it hit the road. One year when she wasn’t
excited about the show’s new direction using rap music, she made the
models scrap everything and start all over. Committed to community service, Mrs. Johnson received many honors
from the United Negro College Fund, The Boys & Girls Club of
Chicago, Alabama A & M, Loyola University and many others. In 1988,
Mrs. Johnson returned to her alma mater, Talladega, to receive an
honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. She also had an honorary
degree from Shaw University.

Fiercely independent, Mrs. Johnson could be seen driving around Chicago
in her two-tone Rolls Royce. She let nothing stop her. Like Frank
Sinatra, she did things her way. And she did it with style. To date, more than 4,000 shows have been performed in the United
States, the Caribbean, London, England, and Kingston, Jamaica. Ebony
Fashion Fair has raised more than $55 million for various scholarship
groups.

October 09, 2009

Tennis champ Serena Williams graces the cover of this month’s ESPN magazine — completely naked! The 28-year-old stripped off for the publication’s first ever ‘Body Issue’, which hits newsstands Friday. Serena is among six athletes who have been chosen to appear on six different covers of the magazine. The other five sport figures include mixed martial artist Gina Carano, NASCAR driver Carl Edwards, triathlete Sarah Reinertsen, Minnesota Vikings’ running back Adrian Peterson, and Dwight Howard of the NBA’s Orlando Magic. Williams — who last month she made a furious outburst against a line judge at the US Open — has previously admitted she struggles to accept her body shape.“My thighs… I think they’re too big,” she has said. “And also my arms. I think they’re too muscular. They’re too thick.“Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and am, like, I want to lose my inner thigh. I’ve got to do an hour of cardio today, or whatever. I try not to do it, but the insecurity comes back sometimes.“I want women to know that it’s okay. You can be whatever size you are, and you can be beautiful both inside and out.”

September 16, 2009

August 27, 2009

by Zeke Turner | 9:25 am, August 27th, 2009 ~Earlier this week, the new owners of Vibe magazineintroduced their editor in chief, Jermaine Hall, the man who will be charged with transforming the title, which was shuttered in July, into a bimonthly with a ramped up online presence. But Hall, who got his start at Vibe as an intern during college and most recently held the top spot at King magazine, another recently closed magazine geared towards a black/urban audience, isn’t intimidated in the least. In fact he’s excited to ‘broaden the bin,’ and go after an ASME or two. We spoke with him on the day after his new job was announced. See a slideshow of Jermaine Hall’s favorite Vibe covers of all time here. Have you been intimidated at all by the task of reinventing, reimagining Vibe? As far as being intimidated … I’ve always been very confident about anything dealing with editorial, so I’m definitely not intimidated.

Actually, as I said before, I’m very excited. I love all the eras of Vibe but one of my favorite eras is Alan Light’s tenure [1994-1997] — the book was at its broadest during that time. I’m looking to recapture that feel, but bring it up to date. Has it been of comfort to you that you’re working with other Vibe alumni like Len Burnett? It’s like having a Jedi to guide you through your travels — stories that they can tell, the mistakes that they’ve seen. The thing I love the most is to be able to throw an idea out there and have Len come back and say ‘maybe you should think about it this way.’ There’s a lot of back and forth, and eventually we get on the same page. I also want to bring Brett Wright into that conversation as well because he’s obviously a very important part of what’s going on right now.

Brett Wright told the Times that he hasn’t talked to Quincy Jones recently. Have you?

I have not talked to Quincy Jones.

Do you have any idea what he meant when he said, “They messed my magazine all up”?

[laughs] Quincy’s an icon — you have to respect that he had the vision to create a product like that. As far as messing up the product, I think that Vibe has done a good job of documenting the culture for the last 16 years. I wouldn’t say that the product has been messed up.

Have you heard any rumors saying that Vibe went astray becuase there were so many white people involved on the corporate level?

I haven’t heard that.

You were the webmaster at Vibe from 1997 to 1999. How much did you feel like you knew what you were doing, preparing content for readers online?

Here’s the thing that we did know back then: We knew that we had the capability to provide immediate information. You can get things up on the web every minute of every day. Back then that was a problem for a lot of magazines and their web properties. A lot of editors didn’t really understand the value of online yet. The thinking was that if you give it to them online, then they won’t want to read it in print, rather than using online to push the magazine.

How hard do you think it’s going to be to get Vibe readers to come to a property that’s primarily online? Or will you (the magazine) really be the ones catching up with them (the readers)?

The previous regime did a very good job of trying to acclimate the reader online — they put a lot of emphasis in book, trying to get people to read stories in the book and also relay them to the website. And also you have to keep in mind that the magazine is not going away. It will come out once this year and probably six times next year. It’s not like that part of it is totally going away.

How does it feel going from the top spot at King, one magazine that just closed, to another magazine that just closed and is now relaunching? Do you feel like you’re in no-man’s land?

No, I feel really great. I feel really, really inspired. I started as an intern at Vibe my last year at grad school. My first job in the industry was at Vibe.com, so this is a coming-home story for me. I’m also very excited. We’re going to broaden the scope of the magazine — inject some Hollywood coverage, expand the music scope, cover sports — really make a conscious effort to broaden the bin and not have it be so music-slash–hip-hop specific.

It seems like the thinking is — between Uptown and Vibe — that you all want to create lifestlye titles, not vertical-niche, music titles. It’s anchored by the music, but there’s so many different tentacles to urban culture and urban lifestlye so we want to make sure that we’re covering all of that for the reader. Another thing that’s going to be bigger for us is that we’re going to provide service pieces to the reader. I feel like everybody likes to be told what to do these days. Magazine and online properties are really good places to teach people how to do stuff. CONTINUE READING...

April 02, 2009

This week won't go down as a good one in the history of print journalism. First Blender magazine folded, then the Chicago Sun-Times
filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Now KING, the men's
magazine geared towards African-Americans, looks like it has pulled the
plug, at least according to the Smoking Section blog. OK, so maybe you're
above men's mags and don't care. But keep in mind that KING was
innovative in an important way -- it bucked today's trend of emaciated
women and favored boxum babes with real curves. The only curve it seems
to be on now, though, is a downward one.

September 2012

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